| For most of the last twenty years, the cast of The Devil Wears Prada has said they would return for a sequel if the right story presented itself. It is indeed the right story, or at least the right premise, and any sequel that can get off on the right foot can keep itself upright as it walks the rest of the way down the runway. | | 2026
Directed by: David Frankel
Screenplay by: Aline Brosh McKenna
Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway
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Over at Runway, in 2026, the magazine and its editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) are in hot water for using and promoting a fast fashion brand that was caught employing children in literal sweat shops. Meanwhile, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) did exactly what she said she was going to do, she stayed at Runway as a fresh-faced twenty-something for only a year, and then used her connections and experience to get into real journalism. As a journalist writing serious and important stories, Andy has risen to the top of the field. The top of a crumbling, quickly dying industry that is firing whole departments and entire magazine staff in one fell swoop. So in other words, Andy is unemployed. And Runway desperately needs a serious features editor to rehabilitate its reputation.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that all readers are in agreement with me, that that is a perfect premise. Especially when Andy arrives as a fresh-faced forty-something and Miranda doesn’t remember her, “one of the Emilys”, nope, Miranda doesn’t remember who that is either.
While it’s not quite the entire cast that comes back for the sequel, it is a good number of returning cast members: Streep, Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci all have significant roles, and last but not least, Tracie Thoms is the only one who has actually matured in the past twenty years and looks very different (as a compliment) than she did as Andy’s friend Lily. The sequel also introduces a whole host of famous names and faces, way too many to name, and none that are given the types of one-liners that made the original movie so memorable. BJ Novak and Lucy Liu are important to the plot, Kenneth Branagh adds some momentary emotional gravitas, while Justin Theroux is by far the most forced comedy wise.
As perfect as the premise is, (I absolute adore that Andy got to live out the exact dream she intended to from the moment she accepted that fateful job at Runway), the plot peters itself out pretty quickly. It rehashes plot points from the original (as most sequels do) and repeats the concept that journalism is dying and can’t afford to staff real writers and editors. The movie is over two hours long and it never gets more indepth than that.
I suspect most audience members aren’t here for a treatise on the death of the journalism industry. They are here for the biting and scathing one-liners (not as many as the first one) or the fashion. I’m more like Andy and fashion illiterate, but there was an audience member gasping at certain things I can only assume were fashion callbacks to the original or references to other things the fashion literate would get.
Anne Hathaway is back at the top of her game and gets to share with Stanley Tucci my favourite line of the movie: “You look like a nervous cat” “Like a compliment?” “No.”. I’m still laughing trying to envision a nervous cat as a compliment.
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